Want a Challenge? Try the CMP’s Four Gun Aggregate

by Dennis Santiago
Tricked-out match guns are fun but, if you want to prove that you’ve got an eagle eye and steady hands, a true test of skill is the Civilian Marksmanship Program’s As-Issued Four Gun Aggregate.

The Four Gun Aggregate encompasses a series of CMP John C. Garand 30-shot matches (200-yard As-Issued Military Rifle Match Course A) on NRA SR targets at one of the CMP Regional Games or the Nationals officiated by the CMP. These are the only places you can earn the coveted neck-ribbon CMP achievement medals.

You will need four as-issued rifles. The first is the M-1 Garand. (The course of fire is named after this rifle’s inventor.) This remarkable battle rifle will test your prowess at slow prone, rapid prone, and offhand. The match winner will put almost all bullets into a saucer.

You do get to hear that classic “ping” when the en bloc clip ejects with this gun. It’s a good idea to write your firing point number on your hand for each match because you will move around over the course of the tournament.

Next comes the hyper-accurate 1903 Springfield. You can use either the WW I M1903 or the later WW II M1903A3 model with peep sights. A Springfield will typically shoot groups half the size of a Garand with the same ammunition. Think potential in terms of tea cups instead of saucers.

The drawback with the Springfield is that the sight adjustments are cruder so you need to know how to favor that last bit of hold off in your sight picture to nail that pinwheel X. It also introduces bolt manipulation skill and stripper clip reloading into the rapid fire stage. Lastly, you are doing your trigger control through what is essentially a Mauser pattern military field trigger.

Next, up the degree of difficulty by removing the ability to adjust windage. This gets you to Vintage Military Rifle with WW II and earlier firearms designed to bombard enemy formations and trenches en masse; a form of warfare that predates the age of gunpowder. You’ll see all manner of as-issued rifles from all over the world here. The big favorites are the M1917 Enfield and the Swedish 6.5×55 Mauser. The British SMLE and greater Mauser families are also present as are the very accurate Russian Mosin-Nagants and Swiss K-31s. One will even see the occasional Krag come to the line.

The yellow tape means the gun was tested and passed minimum trigger pull weight. Triggers are always weighed. The match winner’s gun is inspected one more time. Honor is paramount.

Last of the four is the newcomer. The CMP used to run a 3-gun Aggregate. CMP added the As-Issued Modern Military Rifle to the series. The rule book provides for many models but the gun of guns for this phase is the 1960s Vietnam-era pencil barrel, triangle hand guard, 1:12″ twist, A1 carry handle sights, Eugene Stoner AR-15 pattern rifle. Slick side is even better. Feed it 52gr BTHPs and try your best to shoot cleans. Do not crank on the sling like a modern free-floated, lead weight-laden Service Rifle. It won’t work. You have to be even more careful with most other foreign military rifle models.

Can it shoot? You betcha! See the 97-3X rapid viewed through a spotting scope. Note the happy face from the guys in the pits. My slow prone stage was a 99-4X. Those Mattel specials can hammer.

These regional CMP Games matches are a gathering of the shooting family from far and wide. It’s a level playing field for all using essentially the same stock guns. The winner truly is the marksman who makes the fewest mistakes over the next 72 hours.

But far more important, it’s a learning experience and a connection to the kind of arms training the “well regulated” clause in the Second Amendment really envisions. As in skating, before one competes in freestyle, one must qualify in the compulsories. This is it.

Note: I didn’t get my fourth trinket in four gun in 2013. My SMLE – well its ammo maker (me) – made a mistake, the subject of another blog entry of its own. The fourth medal in the above photo is from a separate CMP M-1 Carbine match.